They all jump at that voice, prey under the fangs of a new predator.

  This bodyguard so casually speaks, routine as usual as they can now ever so barely glimpse her form. “Hey hey, no need to panic. It’s not like you’re here to do anything bad, right?”

  “Who the hell are you?” The Constable demands, gripping the club in his left hand.

  “Oh who? Me?” This thin woman pauses, pointing to herself with a confused look. “Oh I’m just the bodyguard they hired.”

  There’s a moment of consideration from the group of gangsters, who all come to the same conclusion. “If you know what’s good for you, you better leave and come back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” She fakes confusion in an obviously sarcastic answer. “Oh, but I’m paid for tonight. If I left, I’d be breaking my contract!”

  “You leave, or we’ll make you and your lil’ rich kids regret it.”

  That bodyguard takes a razor-sharp analysis of this situation, her eyes flickering between the clubs in hands, the knives in their sheaths, and just one single revolver handgun stored on the waist of one of the real constables among this group of wannabe gangsters.

  And this bodyguard was here against them all, seemingly unarmed in loose fitting robes with gold trim.

  “Oh no!” She exclaims. “Will you hurt me if I don’t go away? Beat me to a pulp with those clubs?”

  “No, we’ll bury you here.” One of the enforcers growls at her. “Now leave.”

  It’s a threat, raw and untamed from the primordial fear of death.

  But there’s no reaction.

  Except for a long pause as she thinks about it, putting a finger on her chin and a cute look on her face as she derives more information. “Oh I’m very scared now. I’m almost scared enough to scream out ‘help, help me someone!’ Is there anyone here who can hear me and report this? If I scream, everyone will know you were the ones that hurt me!”

  Another voice scoffs. “Nobody’s out here except us. So step aside bitch.”

  “Really?!” The bodyguard almost faints. “Oh dear, I should really leave now! Walk away and return tomorrow morning~”

  And she stops suddenly, holding that gaze at these animals. The voice is dead, tone even to a horrifying point. “... but we all know I’m not leaving. I’m gonna fight, and a whole lot of you are gonna die.”

  “You?” The entire party almost laughs at this demonstration of pathetic power. “It’s nine against one.”

  “Nine against one?!” The bodyguard makes a dramatic gesture of actually counting out each figure in the darkness. “Wow! I didn’t realize I was this outmatched! Please, please don’t hurt me!”

  The world watches as they all begin to fan out, begin to ready themselves for a one sided beatdown of a very, very out of their element private guard.

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  Steel clubs gleaming, breaths sharpening, eyes widening as adrenaline dumps into bodies.

  Guardsman Mori Fushimi suddenly stands straight, clearing her throat. All deceptions dropped, now making eye contact with the thing emerging from within the gates. “Though, I don’t think I’m the one you should be worried about tonight.”

  Metal scrapes against stone, brass clanking against ceramic, the thin blue light reflecting over its body as if through the eyes of a corpse.

  The Dominion had seen these things in action once.

  In the midst of the Third Stygian War, when the Axial Powers had landed upon the shores of Sennokura and were driving into the heartlands of Longyuan, came the intelligence the entirety of Ensolia needed.

  Miles behind the lines, the Elector of the Amorian Republic would be coming to visit the cleared urban battlefield of Sennokura. How, in some grave propagandistic display of arrogance, a leader of the Axial Powers would come and personally set foot on Tiancin soil and declare a preemptive victory over this continent.

  The Imperium punched through the moment she stepped foot in Tianci, dropping twenty six of them behind the lines. Twenty six Impericutta legionaries right in the heart of the conquered city in a brazen aerostatic assault, cut off from any support or hope of escape.

  Twenty six against an entire army, with one mission.

  When the Dominion finally completed their counter-push on the city, with the 52nd Rifles arriving into the outskirts of the city square, they found just one intact corpse of a demon amongst the carnage.

  Those Impericutta had stuffed their armor with layers of explosives, rigging each of their suits of ceramic like living fragmentation grenades on deadman switches. Fighting to the last, taking untold lives with each of their fallen, scattering themselves into the world with gore and glory.

  Except for one: a killing blow from an anti-tank rifle severing the detonation batteries of its suit; saving this body for desecration by the Imperium’s own wartime allies.

  The Dominion took it apart, deep in some cleanroom blacksite in Hong-er under the watchful gaze of their greatest minds.

  And one rifleman stood guard as they did it: some young Private Fushimi watched in silent disgust as they gently took pieces of shattered ceramic plating and cut into decomposition soaked cloth.

  With each layer removed this rifleman felt bile rise to her throat as the scent of rotting meat began to permeate that perfectly sealed room. And with each incision deeper into the body of this demonic thing she began to believe that it was still some monster within, some inhuman spirit that had possessed this armor and animated it like a puppet.

  So when they removed its helmet, that young soldier threw her guts.

  Because it was human.

  That bloated face, with marbled flesh slogging off in its own soupy fermentation, had stared back at these masked military surgeons, apparatus agents and that single Rifleman with some macabre level of life.

  This long dead Amorian man, who couldn’t have been older than that young Private Mori Fushimi, was a human just like her.

  This was an orphan child taken from somewhere in the vast city streets of an Imperium, a purposeless soul honed into a living weapon through that terrible forge deep within their mountain monastery.

  That thing on the operating table was a weapon turned against its own face, its own people—one of a faceless twenty six sent to kill the elector of its homeland.

  That was the horror of the Imperium.

  And one of those same ceramic demons was here, in this small town with an ocean view.

  A bulky light machine gun in its hands like some toy, the loose belt of a hundred rounds draped across the monster’s arm ready to utterly eviscerate this outrageous group of nine helpless creatures.

  And they all stare at it, at how within that faceless mask of ceramic there was no soul, no life, no humanity at all.

  Guardsman Mori Fushimi takes a level breath, the words coming from her diaphragm like a cutting chill into this trapped pack of rats. “Let’s all go take a hike shall we? This Doll and I know a nice place in the woods, and I’m certain y’all will learn to love it.”